"Even if I didn't see it, I would
know it's Russian - the sound is so toxic and sick" - words spoken by my friend who's not
into synthesizers. And I guess he's right.

In my view, Aelita is a very
attractive analog synth - it has good analog tone, it has character, and it
has a
satisfactory amount of features. Too bad it was given little attention in
regard to physical quality - many, many times it played pranks on me. It was
being serviced for 2 months only to get handicapped again during what
certainly seemed to be a safe method of transportation. I hear that the
Polymoog is the most fragile piece of equipment out there - lift it up, or
tilt it - and something is bound to break & malfunction. So if the Polymoog is
number one in unreliability, Aelita must surely be number two.

A little bit of technical
yada-yada for those of you who do not understand Cyrillic:
Three [VCOs] with 3 waveform shapes, one [LFO] with 4 shapes affecting pitch and filter and two
[3-stage Envelopes].
I also find a button labeled [1x3 Mod],
which I judge by the results to be some kind of Ringmod
/ FM
modulation between OSC 1
and OSC 3. You never know with the Russian gear; there's always something
weird in them which doesn't correspond to the "Western way" of constructing
synths. Moreover, there's an option that imitates [Unison] / [Chord Memory]
which thickens and detunes the sound. Unexpected + interesting
results.

Unpararelled aggressive and dirty wicked sound. Deadly resonance,
be careful with the slider. This is a war juggernaut,
hard to keep straight once you press the accelerator. Drop it on the street
and the asphalt will crack. I don't want to
stay home alone with this synth, at night I'm scared. If Polanski was 'an
evil dwarf', that is to say a coarse personality yet a director of brilliant
movies, Aelita is a spellbinding misfit. I'm leaving the exact
interpretation of that phrase for the first night on which you play your unit.